a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by coffeesp00ns
coffeesp00ns  ·  3114 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I dont know what to do with my life

I have a M.Mus in classical music. I definitely take this perspective, and people may agree or disagree:

Can you think of anything else you want to do with your life? then do that. Art school, music school, and even jobs as professional artistic people are for the sort of people who literally cannot think of doing anything else. Nothing else drives them, nothing else works., They would be a bum on the street if it wasn't for their art form (some of them are anyways).

An obsessive personality is a plus.

With that said, I don't regret going through my degree one bit. It made me who I am and gave me the tools and drive to succeed.

The thing about art degrees that people forget is that nothing about them specifically gets you a job. Nothing gets you a job but work and time (if you're a musician, preferably in one place - two max) As the saying goes "Overnight successes take ten years to happen." Or something like that. You have to be present and working somewhere long enough that people know you, notice you, and think your stuff is good enough that they want to work with you.

The plus side to this is that it means that a degree is no strictly necessary - work and time, however, are mandatory.

You don't have to be the best artist, you just have to be the hungriest - the one to work the most hours, the one to practice their craft the most, the one willing to find personal growth in gigs that are not what you want to be doing. The one who says "yes".

That's the part I'm working on right now. I work a restaurant job to play the bills and am slowly filling my life up with gigs so that one day I don't have to work the resto job. That's life while I keep myself hungry.